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(Washington, DC) The NAACP issued the following statement today, in response to the Kansas Health Care Freedom Amendment that was proposed today in the Kansas State Legislature.

This afternoon, members of the Kansas House and Senate will introduce a proposed Amendment to the Kansas State Constitution, called the “Kansas Health Care Freedom Act”. This proposed Amendment seeks to prevent the implementation of any national Health Care reform measures within the state of Kansas.

“This amendment is outrageous and does nothing to address the current health care crisis. The tactics being used by Representatives Landwehr and Mast and Senator Cook are the very same tactics perfected by segregationist Dixiecrats of the 1960’s,” stated NAACP President and CEO Benjamin Todd Jealous. “In the last century the Dixiecrats tried to obstruct the rights of Black Americans, and now in this century they are trying to obstruct the rights of everyday working Americans. It was wrong then and it’s wrong now. All who believe every Americans right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness must stand up and fight egregious pieces of legislation like this, we cannot let the greedy insurance company CEO’s trump the needs of patients and physicians.”

The legislation would add a new article to the State Constitution, which would read, “A law or rule shall not compel, directly or indirectly, any person, employer, or health care provider to participate in any health care system or purchase health insurance”.

“The way to achieve real health care reform is not to preempt federal law, nor use political gamesmanship; this legislation will have an adverse effect on everyday working people and will put us further away from achieving comprehensive health care reform. Over 880,000 African Americans have died in the past decade due to the disparities in our health care system and having access to quality affordable health care is not something that should be reserved for the wealthy, or the few. It should be for everyone, and that’s not the case today, and will not be the case if this amendment is passed,” concluded Jealous.

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The 2009 Year End report for the Wichita Branch NAACP, detailing branch activities in the areas of Education, Civil Rights Enforcement, Legislative Advocacy, Youth Development, Legal Redress, Health, Branch Administration, and Advocacy Training, is now available to the public.

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What is Net Neutrality?
Net Neutrality is the idea that the Internet should always remain an unrestricted information and communication portal. That like streets and highways, the internet should be open and available for anyone to use and that it should continue to provide an equal platform for all voices.

What are the challenges to Net Neutrality?
The challenge to Net Neutrality is that several major telecom companies (such as AT&T, Verizon, Comcast and Time Warner) are currently seeking to monetize the internet. Access to technologies, sites, applications, and speeds, would be limited and tiered by a fee structure with the fastest speeds and best access reserved for those companies or organizations that paid a premium rate. Akin to television, where you have public access, broadcast, basic cable, and premium cable channels, these telecom companies are seeking to divide the internet along the same basic lines. Under the structure they seek to create, these telecom companies would be able to change they way you and I access the internet; providing packages that favored their sites, products, search engines, and platforms, while at the same time slowing down or limiting access to the services, sites, and applications of their competitors.

Why should I care about Net Neutrality?
Net Neutrality is a concept that is embedded in the way we view the internet. The Internet provides everyone who owns or has access to a computer an equal opportunity to render their thoughts and opinions into the public sphere. It is the great equalizer – giving everyone the opportunity to “tell their own story”. The Internet is changing the way that we see and understand the world around us; giving us immediate access to voices, video, pictures, documents, and first-hand accounts of events. The internet does not have an editor. The internet is not concerned with market share. The internet does not use talking points. The internet does not spin. The internet is simply an open platform, where anyone who has a story can tell it, and anyone else who has an interest can listen. It is the 21st century Hyde Park speaker’s corner; a true digital soapbox…

On the internet, community organizations and ordinary citizens don’t have to worry about whether or not the local paper or television stations feel their issues are “newsworthy” or if they have sufficient appeal to the larger community: This a shared space, where we each can speak to our respective constituencies without having to meet the approval of some editorial board or telecom company, and without having to pay to speak. Our voices and our stories are posted on equal footing, using the same technologies, which are accessible at the same speeds, and available to the same audience, as those posted by national media organizations, government officials, or the Telecom companies themselves.

Currently, the internet allows everyone to speak freely with no gatekeepers deciding which voices should be amplified and which others should be silenced. Money does not enhance your message, nor does the lack of money diminish it. There are no gatekeepers deciding which sites should be freely accessible, and which should have limited access. There are no gatekeepers deciding whose data and content will run fast and whose should run slowly. There are no financial limitations on speakers and content providers (ordinary people like you and I). There is no overseer to decide if you’d paid enough money to host those videos, or to post those pictures. But the plans proposed by the telecom companies would change all that. Under the guise of honoring the “free market”, the Telecom companies and their supporters seek to introduce fee structures, tiered access, and content packaging. This is why we need Net Neutrality.

What do opponents say about Net Neutrality?
The “Government Takeover” Argument: Critics argue that Net Neutrality legislation represents a ‘government takeover’ of the Internet. They claim that the Internet is now a Free Market System and should be allowed to continue in its current state without Government interference. The obvious problem with this argument is that the Telecom companies have made it clear that they do not want to see the internet continue in its current state. They are proposing a change to a tiered system as I have described above. Net Neutrality legislation would not “take over the Internet” and change it to a new system; it would simply safeguard the system we currently have. It would codify the principles of an open and free Internet into law and prevent Internet providers from blocking, speeding up or slowing down Web content based on its source, ownership or destination.

The “Corporate Welfare” Argument: Groups like Hands off the Internet and NetCompetition.org argue that Net Neutrality is akin to a corporate welfare scheme that would benefit the Silicon Valley crowd; forcing everyone to subsidize the expansion of bandwidth and capacity which in turn Silicon Valley would use sans the costs of development. They argue that speed and capacity are expensive so those who need it should pay for it. In other words, pay to play – let everyone have access to the net but scale their speed and capacity according to their ‘need’ and budget. That way the Silicon Valley crowd could have their lighting fast connection speeds because they’d be paying for them, smaller companies could purchase the speed and capacity they needed on a lesser scale, and ordinary folks could have a ‘level of access’ suitable for our need and budget. (Again, think television: Premium Channels, Basic Cable, Network Television, and Public Access). The problem with this argument is that it assumes that people are merely ‘content consumers’ and not ‘content providers’. The real power of the internet is that it allows ordinary citizens to be content providers. Its one thing to offer lower bandwidth and slower speeds for downloads and surfing, but when you think in terms of content providers (people who use blogs, social networks, web sites, you tube etc) scaling their bandwidth and speed to match their bank accounts artificially prioritizes some voices over others. Those with money would speak louder; their voices heard faster, their messages accessed easier, their messages better enabled with video and streaming content. Those without money would be relegated to the cyberspace equivalent of public television; Slow uploads, poorly enabled, with lesser capacity and lessened access.

Next Steps?
The first step is to educate yourself. You should begin by reading HR3458 – The Internet Freedom Preservation Act of 2009. Please, take the time to read the whole text, because to effectively advocate for the bill, we must fully understand it. The telecom companies have already spent millions of dollars to lobby Congress and the FCC against Net Neutrality, so it’s critical that we understand not only why the bill is important, but also why our opponents are wrong.

Second, you should contact your Representative to let them know that you support Net Neutrality and that you want them to vote in favor of HR3458.

And lastly, stay informed… Visit savetheinternet.com and sign the petition; add your voice to the 1.6 million people who have already come out in favor of Net Neutrality…

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Civil ‘Rights’ are the rights and privileges guaranteed by law to all citizens of the United States. The Civil Rights movement was an organized and protracted effort to ensure that the rights guaranteed by law were equally extended to all Americans. Civil Rights Organizations were those groups who worked to ensure the fair and equal application of the laws, foremost among them being the 14th amendment to the Constitution which reads in part,

“No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.”

In its truest sense, the struggle over civil rights has never really abated. Because Civil ‘Rights’ are, in essence, matters of law; and the laws from which they derive are dynamic.  Their meanings and applications are subject to change with each interpretation. By Stare Decisis - as courts render new decisions, their precedent becomes the new practice, so a law that you wrote or read yesterday, could be interpreted to mean something completely different next year. When you factor in the role of politics and how federal appointments to District Courts are often made along political and ideological lines, you come to realize that our Civil ‘Rights’ are extremely fragile. We as activists must not only concern ourselves with securing Civil Rights for all Americans, but we must be equally focused upon protecting those Civil Rights that now exist. Because on any given Monday a court decision, a ballot initiative, or a legal appeal could change the law or its application and strip away a right you had previously taken for granted.

Which brings me to Gross vs FBL Financial Services Inc

Jack Gross went to work at FBL Financial Services back in 1987. He worked his way through the ranks, and by 1999 he had been named the Claims Administration Vice President. A couple years later, Jack’s job title and duties began to change. He noticed that the duties and responsibilities that he once had, were being shifted to a younger employee. In 2003 Jack noted that his position as “Claims Project Coordinator” lacked a real job description or clearly defined duties, but his younger co-worker had all but assumed the functional equivalent of his old position.

In 2004 Jack Gross sued FBL Financial Services for Age Discrimination. The trial lasted a mere 5 days and Jack Gross prevailed. The jury found that Jack Gross proved, by a preponderance of the evidence, that he was demoted and his age was a motivating factor in the demotion decision. They awarded him $46,945.00 for lost compensation.

Not surprisingly, FBL appealed… They filed a Petition for Writ of Certiorari, informally referred to as a “Cert Petition” with the Supreme Court. A Cert Petition is a formal request for the Supreme Court to review the decision of a lower court. The Supreme Court granted the Writ of Certiorari and on June 18th, Justice Thomas rendered the 5-4 decision of the court which held that: A plaintiff bringing an Age Discrimination in Employment Act (ADEA) disparate-treatment claim must prove, by a preponderance of the evidence, that age was the “but-for” cause of the challenged adverse employment action. The burden of persuasion does not shift to the employer to show that it would have taken the action regardless of age, even when a plaintiff has produced some evidence that age was one motivating factor in that decision.

In a nutshell, the Supreme Court reversed the lower courts decision in favor of Jack Gross, and also put forward a new legal standard for ruling in Age Discrimination cases. The conservative majority on the court (Thomas, Scalia, Alito, Roberts, and Kennedy) ruled that a plaintiff in an age discrimination case must not only prove that age was “A“ motivating factor in an adverse employment action or decision; they must prove that age was “THE“ motivating factor. And unless or until the plaintiff can present direct evidence of the employer’s primary personal motivations, the employer should not be required to prove anything.

The case was remanded back to the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals for retrial. And earlier today, the 8th Circuit Court issued a new ruling in favor of FBL Financial Services… The preponderance of the evidence still shows that FBL Services was considering Jack Gross’ age when deciding to demote him, but as of this morning, that no longer meets the legal standard of an Age Discrimination Claim. You see, protection from discrimination or adverse employment actions on the basis of ones age is still a ‘Civil Right’, but is is now a right guaranteed in a law that is virtually impossible to assert.

I said all of that to say this… Civil Rights are fragile. Like the picture above, these Rights are like a candle in the wind. If we are not vigilant, if we do not safeguard and protect them, they will be lost…The courts have been busy chipping away at them, bit by bit, for a number of years. We must remember that the protections and safeguards that we fought so hard to secure in the 50’s and 60’s are not promised to our children. Whether or not they are passed on to the next generation will depend on what we do today. Because on any given Monday, things can change… just like this morning.

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The new agency would address the flaws in the current regulatory system overseeing and helping to enforce consumer protection laws

THE ISSUE:
President Obama has proposed establishing a new Consumer Financial Protection Agency (CFPA), which would be charged with overseeing consumer protection in the home mortgages and financial services areas. Specifically, the President is proposing that we take all of the agencies that are currently meant to monitor and protect consumers’ interests when it comes to financial products and put them under one agency, thereby consolidating authority in one place with a new emphasis on protecting mortgage loans and financial services for consumers.

Our current system of consumer protection fails to protect American families from the most basic abuses that can cost households hundreds of thousands of dollars, and even their homes. Current laws and enforcement allow a range of institutions to escape supervision because responsibility for consumer protection is fragmented across too many regulators and many finance companies are not regulated at all at the Federal level. Regulators have spent recent years asking “What’s the effect on the financial firm?” without asking “What’s the effect on consumers?” As a result, among other problems, regulators permitted inappropriate mortgages and abusive credit card practices. Sadly, many of the worst abusers targeted low-income families and racial and ethnic minorities.

In the recent crisis, many of the people who were targeted by unscrupulous lenders lost their savings, their financial security, and in too many cases their homes. Furthermore, millions of American families saw their retirement savings or even their children’s college funds fall dramatically. Unregulated markets and over-reliance on the flawed judgments of credit rating agencies increased the instability of the financial system, which in turn exposed individual investors to tremendous risk. As proposed, the CFPA would focus on the core reforms that will address the causes of the current crisis, make the system more stable and resilient and give the government tools to better anticipate, avoid and address a potential future crisis.

The NAACP strongly supports this much needed consumer protection proposal and would in fact strengthen it by making civil rights an important component of the new agency’s stated mission and create a Civil Rights/Fair Lending Compliance and Enforcement Office. This office should serve a dual function – first to insure that the CFPA itself operates in a manner that affirmatively furthers fair housing and second to insure that financial market players comply with fair lending statutes. The CFPA must have the appropriate power and resources to vigorously enforce the fair lending laws under its auspices – Equal Credit Opportunity Act (ECOA), Home Mortgage Disclosure Act, Community Reinvestment Act, and other appropriate fair lending statutes. It must have sufficient authority and resources to conduct fair lending examinations, engage in compliance activities, and write rules. This office must be headed by a senior level administrator who reports directly to the Director of the CFPA.

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As early as 2007, I began writing about the US Commission on Civil Rights and their tragic decline from a once powerful fact-finding and investigative agency into an ironic caricature of its former self. ( See HERE and see HERE) Through a series of Bush-era politically motivated appointments, the 8-member Commission is now composed of 6 conservatives who are ideologically opposed to the goals and precepts of the American Civil Rights movement.

The Agency that once challenged the Federal Government and Law Enforcement to constructively deal with issues of Voter disenfranchisement, Domestic Violence, and the excesses and abuses of the Criminal Justice System, has been turned on its head. It has spent most of the last few years investigating the effectiveness of HBCU’s, developing guidance for school districts to achieve ‘Unitary Status’ and end their deseg programs, attacking affirmative action, and most recently formally opposing the employee free choice act.

In 2007, the conservative majority on the Commission released a Briefing Report on school segregation which essentially stated that the DOJ should continue in their efforts to assist districts in achieving ‘unitary status’ wherein they’d be free from the strictures of Brown vs Board or previous court orders brought about through civil rights or discrimination lawsuits. The two dissenting Commissioners, Yaki and Melendez, released a statement in which they wrote, “The quality of the agency’s reports has declined because it has tried to do too much with too little. Hour-and-a-half long monthly (or sometimes bimonthly) briefings with a few guest speakers can at best do nothing more than recycle commonly known truths about civil rights problems. At worst, such briefings serve as thinly-veiled political cover for the Commission majority to issue ideological policy statements to influence pending legislation, administrative decisions or reviews, and judicial cases. It is shameful to trade on the Commission’s past reputation for quality work in this way.”

Well, now it seems they’re at it again. This time, the US Commission on Civil Rights is releasing a new Briefing report in which they attack the proposed Health Care Reform efforts as ‘racially discriminatory’ because several of the draft bills being floated around Congress have provisions to specifically address Health Disparities. The conservative majority on the US Commission on Civil Rights views any effort to address issues within a specific racial or ethnic group as a “race-based” remedy and therefore deems said efforts as preferential to those they seek to address.

African Americans have the shortest life expectancy of any racial or ethnic group in America. African Americans have statistically higher rates of hypertension, stroke, diabetes, HIV, perinatal diseases, pancreatic cancer, stomach cancer, prostate cancer, colon cancer, SIDS, low birth weight babies, etc… YET health care Access as a Civil Right has never come up on the Commission’s radar. But the fact that draft versions of a Health Care reform bill would seek to address these issues by promoting and encouraging ‘cultural competency’ among health care providers has managed to summon the Commission into action.

The provision that has raised their ire reads in part:

The secretary, “shall design and implement the payment mechanisms and policies under this section in a manner that — (1) seeks to reduce health disparities (including racial, ethnic and other disparities).” (House Bill Section 224)

The notion that targeted spending is inherently discriminatory is simply false. The GI bill is not ‘discriminatory’ against non-veterans. Social Security is not ‘discriminatory’ against the young. Breast Cancer research is not ‘discriminatory’ against men. Prostate Cancer research is not ‘discriminatory’ against women… We as a nation have often tended to issues that have some disparate impact on one or more segments of our society. And in a matter as sensitive as health care and health dispaities; one where the disparities are literally matters of life and death; we should expect no less…

Wade Henderson, President and Chief Executive Officer of the Leadership Council on Civil Rights described this recent effort by saying, ”The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights is overstepping its bounds yet again with another slanted and incorrect interpretation of logical and constitutional standards,”. The group is “injecting themselves in the health care debate without any expertise and understanding of how the training in the House bill will work.”

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At the Centennial Convention of the NAACP, the delegates unanimously passed a resolution opposing the use of Credit Reports in Employment and calling for all NAACP units to partner with like-minded organizations to bring an end to this practice.

Resolution: Use of Credit History in Employment
Therefore be it resolved, that the NAACP stands opposed to the use of credit reports in hiring as a form of economic discrimination, and will partner with allied organizations to conduct educational forums as well as working through the local, State, and Federal legislative process to make sure that such practices are prohibited.

House Bill 3149; the Equal Employment for All Act (HR3149) would amend the Fair Credit Reporting Act to generally prohibit the use of consumer credit checks in employment/hiring decisions.

Under the bill, employers would be prohibited from using information in a consumer report or investigative consumer report pertaining to an employee or applicant’s creditworthiness, credit standing, or credit capacity when making hiring determinations or taking adverse employment actions as defined by the Fair Credit Reporting Act. Notably, this prohibition would apply even if the employee or applicant consents to such use. The bill would establish exceptions when: (1) the employee or applicant applies for, or currently holds, employment that requires national security or FDIC clearance; (2) the employee or applicant applies for, or currently holds, employment with a state or local government agency that otherwise requires use of a consumer report; (3) the employee or applicant applies for, or currently holds, a supervisory, managerial, professional, or executive position at a financial institution; or (4) otherwise required by law.

The law is necessary because disaggregated credit data shows graduated disparities in credit scoring between racial and socio-economic groups. The use of credit checks for the purposes of making employment decisions would have a disparate impact on minorities and those from lower socio-economic classes, who are statistically likely to have lower credit scores than their more affluent counterparts. Furthermore, there is no reliable data that indicates that Credit History is any indicator of future job performance.

“There is no social science to support the assumption that credit histories reliably predict success on the job…this law would help to stop the vicious cycle of those who seek new job opportunities to pay their creditors but cannot obtain work because they lost a job and have been unable to pay their creditors,” said Audrey Wiggins, director of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law’s Employment Discrimination.

The Bill is currently in the House Committee on Financial Services.

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